Re-photo

Most Saturdays there seem to be about a million women shopping in Oxford St, and quite a few men too, worshipping at the altar of consumption. It’s a place I try to avoid, especially if I’m trying to get anywhere in a hurry, with crowded pavements and buses largely stationary.  Unless, like my friend Paul Baldesare, you want to document such things. Its something I’ve tried in the past but don’t think I have the stamina to attempt now.

The front of the march turns on to Oxford St

But Saturday it was different, with women marching in the ‘Million Women Rise‘ march from their assembly point in Portman Square turning onto Oxford St at the corner of Selfridges and continuing along it to Oxford Circus before turning down Regent St on its way past Piccadilly Circus to a rally at Waterloo Place.

This was intended to be (but was not quite entirely) an all-woman march, and although most of the couple of thousand or so taking part seemed happy to be photographed even by a male photographer, once the march was in progress we were asked to keep off the roadway while doing so. Which I did (although plenty of others did not) and was a little annoyed to then be harassed by one over-zealous steward for standing too close to the edge of the pavement. It was however an isolated incident.  But as a photographer who very much prefers to work close to people this restriction very much affected my work, and I was taking much more with longer focal lengths than usual.

The  march takes place at this time to mark International Women’s Day (the actual day is March 8th) and its theme – on the banner above – is “together we can end violence against women.” One of the more popular chants was  “However we dress, wherever we go, yes means yes, no means no!”

A few men marched in solidarity with the women and children at the rear of the march

This year, the global theme of International Women’s Day was a similar but significantly different message:  “Women and men united to end violence against women and girls“, which perhaps explains why one of the groups taking part – marching behind the women-only march’ with largely Turkish placards – also contained men.

But of course I was much more interested in the women and the statement that they were making, because, as some of the marchers maintained, “Women are Wonderful”.

By the time I reached Oxford Circus I was exhausted and left the women to continue their protest, while I sloped off to my favourite pub and a very welcome pint of bitter. Fortunately Paul, who had been busily photographing consumption, was ready for a pint too, so I didn’t have to drink on my own. You can see some of his work – from suburbia rather than from Oxford St – in our Another London on-line show which also has work by Mike Seaborne.  Of course an updated version of this show is still available for galleries.

More of my pictures of the women on the Million Women Rise 2009 march on My London Diary, where there are also pictures from last year’s rather larger Million Women Rise march.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 12:25 pm and is filed under My Own Work, Photo Issues, Political Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.